(2/23/99)

It's a suprising statistic. The American Heart Association says since 1984, heart disease has claimed more women than men - and the gap continues to widen.

And that's why women gathered at LDS Hospital today - to deliver a strong message. Science Specialist Ed Yeates explains.

63-year-old Dr. Peggy Stock is President of Westminster College. She's also a woman who knew her heart was in trouble. Her blood pressure was up - so was her weight. "And that's not a very nice word - fat. I was sedentary. I didn't exercise. I worked a lot in my office. My cholesterol was high," she says.

Dr. Stock believes doctors may have taken her condition more seriously had she been a male patient. "My experience is that physicians don't listen as acutely to women and particularly to women in high stress jobs. It's very easy to say first thing - it's your job," Dr. Stock says.

Some doctors agree, saying physicians are often more aware of symptoms in a man - than a woman.

Frank Yanowitz, M.D., of LDS Hospital Fitness Institute, says, "It is a delay in diagnosis and awareness because it is not thought as frequently by many that women have this problem."

Dr. Yanowitz says while women have the same risk for heart disease as men - their anatomy may actually exaggerate the disease.

"Women have smaller arteries than men do," he says, "and therefore the same obstruction in a woman may cause more narrowing."

55-year-old Linda Gardner had no prior warning - no red flags from physicians anything was wrong. "I had no symptoms ahead of time - not feeling good for a week or two or even a few minutes. I had sudden dizziness that leveled me," she says.

That sudden dizziness brought on a major heart attack. That was a year ago. Now, like Peggy Stock, Linda has changed her lifestyle - taking charge, as she says, of her own life.

Studies show cardiovascular disease kills more than a half-million women every year -- that's more than the next 16 causes of death combined, and the cause of almost twice as many deaths as all forms of cancer.